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Snapchat launched a new tool today that lets users create a lens that can be shared on the platform and made public, which is kind of awesome. I played with it a little bit today and it looks fairly straightforward to make some interesting things.

In particular, I like the methodology of creating 2D animations which are just a sequence of images that you pull into the platform and then it animates it based on a few rules you set in it.

One of my friends who runs a comic con in Pensacola, Florida has asked me to create one for them which I think would be a ton of fun. I have a few ideas I would like to use for their Snapchat Lens.

I also have a few ideas for making a snap chat lens for Mystery Dog Rescue, in particular for when Big Give 2018 comes along and we can encourage people to use our Snap Chat lens while at an event in public. I want to celebrate Big Give 2018 at a restaurant to help us raise funds.

If we create a custom lens and then encourage people to use the lens on snap chat, it makes it a better sell for the restaurant to be a part of peoples SnapChat stories.

I am excited to see where this goes.

This is a demo of a Snapchat lens I quickly whipped together on top of one of their templates and worked on while learning how to submit to Snapchat and what their process is. The approval process was quick and uses a simple snapcode to share it to the phone for 24 hours.

Lots of opportunities here for printed material and signs that can market your event. The trick will be to make something people will want to use, but also feature your sponsor logo in some capacity that is not obtrusive.

It is absurd that we have to keep fighting for this. Constantly fighting for this, but today several websites have gone offline in order to “break the internet” to fight for Net Neutrality.

What is Net Neutrality?

Net Neutrality is the belief that all traffic on the internet should be treated equally regardless of source or destination.

This means that if Comcast wants to have more subscribers to their Netflix competitor, they need to build a superior product to Netflix and not throttle the connection to Netflix and force their customers to use their service instead.

One of the big failings in the US is that over 50% of the country only has access to only one service provider when it comes to home internet. I, for example, live in a major city, yet only have access to Time Warner, the other 3 providers in the city currently have no offerings in my neighborhood. Without net neutrality, companies can throttle connections to sites they do not like unless they pay big bucks to be in the fast lane.

This stifles innovation and growth. This prevents some small bookstore owner from creating an Amazon killer. This would lay waste to the SEO industry.

Anyway, instead of rehashing why all this matters like a million other websites have, just read this neat primer, and then call your congressmen and fight for Net Neutrality.

Catapult Weekend was an event hosted by Good Will San Antonio to encourage retired military veterans to launch their own business.

One year ago I was wrapping up work at the office and I headed downstairs to volunteer at an event at Geekdom. They wanted to have a three-day startup weekend event similar to what they had done in the past but targeted towards the retired military.

This was different than the normal startup weekends I had participated in the past. This was less competitive and more structured to be a learning environment for these individual teams.

During the weekend, we were mentoring the different teams, and we found one solo person, whose team had not shown up for day two. After some encouraging, we convinced her to continue to pursue her idea by offering her a free website.

One year later, her website is going strong, and she is actively getting business. It has been an amazing journey to watch her grow and to see all the support she has gotten over the time. I am on her contact form and periodically I see requests for consultations which she can hopefully convert into a new business while retaining her currently existing client.

All of this has been built on her blog and the connections she has made while writing her blog. I always try to encourage clients to maintain a blog, so it is great to see a blog start to gain traction for her.

Sadly they are not doing another weekend again this year, which is a bit of a disappointment because it was a wonderful way to celebrate Veterans Day weekend.

A few years ago I learned of a little HTML 5 game creation engine called Twine. Twine is built around building a little choose your own adventure type story or Interactive Fiction. I had played around with it in the past, but not made anything solid.

For this Halloween, I pulled it up and thought of a story from my past that I thought would make a pretty entertaining little narrative. The names have been changed (and maybe the particular place we visited) but it remains true to the San Antonio folklore scene.

I am really pleased with how my first Twine story turned out. I have a book at home on how to make different styles of interactive fiction, so I am looking forward to deep diving into it and crafting other types of narratives.

The big take away from working on this project was planning. The dialogue had to fit into certain spots or the narrative wouldn’t flow. I think by planning out a decision tree before opening up the program, I can determine what choices the player can make and then modify the passages within the game to fit the decision tree.

Additionally, I need to think about work count early on. The first few passages are long as they build up the exposition. The later passages are short because the action and decisions are taking place. I need to find a way to disrupt those early passages so they do not take up too much screen space and remain balanced with the subsequent action and decision-based passages.

Lots to learn, but it was fun to create something during Halloween while waiting on trick-or-treaters.

This particular project has been a long time coming. But I am glad to see it come through to the end. Several years ago, on the podcast Pdexposures, my cohosts and I would discuss the mystical art of making zines.

I have read several zines throughout the years, but I had never made one on my own. Last year at PolaCon (a polaroid photographers convention for the super nerdy) I was shown a method for making zines that would be simple, cost-effective and fun.

Over the summer, my friend Amanda came to visit me, and while in town we had a craft night and created zines using instant photos we had taken over the years. I am very pleased with how one of mine turned out and sent it to FedEx Kinkos earlier this week to get the first 15 copies of my untitled zine to distribute this weekend at PolaCon.

If these sell out, I will most likely be creating a second run of them to sell on the website. It has been a while since I have tinkered with WooCommerce, and it might be a fun little past time creating these weird books.

Once upon a time I was falling in love, but now I’m only falling apart.

I love space. And was incredibly excited for this years Solar Eclipse, even if San Antonio was only getting a partial Eclipse.

I was so excited I planned ahead and picked up a pair of solar glasses from the local library a month ago to make sure I would have them in time for the solar eclipse.

I planned everything out perfectly, I was going to take a late lunch, head to the roof of the parking garage at the building I work in and head on up to watch an amazing light show.

I office out of a co-working space downtown, so I wasn’t the only nerd their ready to watch the celestial ballet take place.

While talking to a fellow co-worker, I noted that several people where not prepared for the eclipse. So grabbing some paper plates and a paper clip, we quickly rigged up some pinhole cameras to take with us to the roof. The Pinholes were temperamental, and I have to say, the cardboard sheet multi pinhole pictured below is the way to do it.

Now to wait out for the next eclipse. Maybe I will still be in Texas for the one in 2024, which is supposed to be a total eclipse.

Hopefully by then I will have worked out a better solution for photographing the eclipse than holding the glasses over my iPhone camera.

Time Will Tell.

A big note I have for the future tho, is when making a pinhole camera, make certain to get as round a hole as possible. The paper pinholes produced a very faint projection, and I think that is because they were quickly assembled using a paperclip instead of something like a pushpin. It may be more efficient to punch the hole out larger than needed and then use the pinhole through aluminum, similar to how a pinhole camera for film photography is crafted.

The view through the paper plate pinhole. It was difficult to focus accurately on the sheet of paper. Not sure if the hole needed to be made rounder.

For a quick job, it got it done and allowed people to see the eclipse, if faintly.

Originally we came ill-prepared. I assumed the concrete of the parking garage would be bright enough for the pinhole to project on, we fortunately had someone eases failed pinhole camera to project upon to get a clearer picture.

Another co-worker made this amazing multi pinhole sheet. Was a ton of fun seeing the different phases of the eclipse. I saw on the news people with colanders, which could make for some interesting photographs.

His were especially bright against the concrete, he was using a larger hole to produce his image and held the cardboard further away from the street.

Eclipses are a ton of fun to watch, I this is the third I have seen in my lifetime, and I can not wait for more.